Last Chance
by SofterSoftest
Summary: Bruised, broken, and utterly alone, Violet enters the Last Chance General Store. Violaf. One-shot.
1. Chapter 1

Bruised, broken, and utterly alone, Violet enters the Last Chance General Store.

The door slams behind her with a heavy crack. Wind whistles through a bullet hole in the glass, splintered and glinting as a spider's web. Inside, the place is dim and yellowed. The overhead lights remain unlit despite the setting sun, sinking like a stone behind the Mortmain Mountains. Sunset casts the place in deep blues and golds, sparking on dim metal, sinking into black like the bottom of the sea. Like a ship going down. Like drowning.

Exhausted, hardly seeing, Violet glances around the store. Her eyes pass over stacks of magazines, sleeping bags, canned foods, bags of coffee. Linger longingly on a collection of soaps covered in vellum and wrapped in glitzy twine. It is only the second time she has set foot inside the Last Chance, but the smell (untreated lumber, hard candies, bags of spices set too long in the sun - ) is a welcome hint of familiarity.

"Hello?" Her voice warbles into the deep darkness between the aisles. Hearing it makes her flinch, gone so long without another voice that she hardly recognizes her own, let alone this new weight to it - reedy, wounded. A shadow of herself.

To her side, the checkout counter is vacant. Only a small lamp rests beside the cash register, the bulb dim and brown as a beer bottle. She expects the same man as last time (kind face, stern jaw, workworn hands) to rise from behind the counter with a magazine folded in his grip, or to call a greeting from between the dark aisles. Nothing comes.

Violet inches slowly closer to the counter, shirking away from the unwavering darkness. Her body aches with every movement and the hollow pangs of hunger in her gut have returned on sight of so much canned food and wrapped sweets and bright tins of fruits in sugar water. With one last anxious glance around the store, she presses the call bell sitting ready at the counter. It rings sharp and high. A summons.

No shuffle of movement. No answering voice.

Wind whistles through the shattered glass in the door.

Violet tears herself away from the soft, warm light at the counter and, before she can convince herself to flee, hurries between the aisles. She stares straight ahead, avoiding glancing to the bright packages of tempting sweets, even as her fists shake with hunger and want.

The telegram is exactly as she remembers it - small slip of bronzed metal, worn pad of the button covered in black wax, long wire running like a leak out the back and through the wall. It is exact and precise and completely to her memory.

What is not familiar is the sign set crookedly atop it, written in thick marker on torn cardboard: OUT OF ORDER. TELEPHONE BOOTH OUT BACK.

The word SORRY had been written then struck through.

Violet sighs, refusing to bend to the despair pressing like headache behind her eyes. Instead, she reaches into the pocket of her tattered dress, grown grey with grime, and takes her last quarter in hand. During her hard trek down from the mountains, she had taken to traveling with the coin in her mouth, tucked beneath her tongue, too afraid of it tumbling free from her pocket.

She had spit it out just before arriving to the Last Chance, embarrassed of the scrutiny she might encounter if the owner had seen her spit a coin into her palm as payment for whatever goods she might pick.

Telling herself she will return it later, Violet swipes a copy of _The Daily Punctilio_ as she exits the store and stomps down the front steps. Weary, she crosses to the back of the property, finding a battered red telephone booth with a single flickering light inside. High grasses have grown in dense clusters around it, and the door sticks as Violet shoulders it open.

Inside, the booth is humid and dingy. A dirt floor rises to cracked glass panes, splinters catching the last golden specks of sunset. The phone hangs off its hook, swaying softly in the grass. Violet picks it up gently, as if accepting a precious gift.

She taps the tab and presses the phone softly to her ear, relieved and sickened to hear the flat droll of the dial tone.

With a grimace, Violet flips the newspaper in her hand, examining the very front page. A large monochrome photograph catches her eye first - a brand new theatre in the middle of the city covered with lights. A man stands tipping his hat to the photographer as he poses on the sidewalk before the front doors. Violet recognizes a pair of shiny eyes, smug and bright, before her gaze cuts away to read the title: NEW THEATRE NAMED IN HONOR OF LOCAL ACTOR.

_New construction_, she reads, skimming. _Grand entrance hall. Tours and refreshments provided to public on opening evening. Party to follow. For all questions and inquiries, please call the box office at - _

With shaking hands and grubby fingers, Violet inserts her last quarter and slowly, carefully dials the number.

A peppy, feminine voice answers on the second ring. "Count Olaf's Theatre for the Criminally Talented! How can I help you this evening?"

"Hi," Violet breathes, knees suddenly weak with relief. This feeling is so momentarily overwhelming, her empty stomach heaves and her heartbeat spikes. She sways on her feet, dizzy, bracing her free hand on the wall. "I was just wondering - is the grand opening tonight?"

"Sure is, young lady. It started about an hour ago, so you've got plenty of time to stop by and check the place out if you're interested. Care to hear our list of upcoming shows and classes?"

"No thank you," Violet says hurriedly, unsure of how long her quarter will last. "Actually I was hoping Count Olaf might be there. I need to speak with him. I'm - " Revulsion stoppers her throat like a clogged drain. After several moments, she forces, "I'm his adoptive daughter. Violet Baudelaire."

"Oh, certainly! Even tonight, we've had several women calling, wanting to know where the Count's private dressing room is and if he accepts congratulatory flowers, but I can see this is quite different from all that. Give me one moment sweetheart, and I'll get him on the phone for you."

"Thank you," Violet says, even though the woman has already set down the phone. There's a squeak of a closing door, and nearly two minutes of silence in which Violet kicks around the trash beneath her feet and picks at a peeling, faded sticker stuck crooked near the grimey keypad.

The returning squeak of the opening door nearly makes her gasp. Even though she is completely alone at the Last Chance, she straightens up, shoulders back, eyes ahead.

She hears Olaf hum as he takes a seat and slowly raises the phone.

"He-_llo_?" He answers sardonically and even through the distance, his voice makes goosebumps race up her back and a shiver rack her shoulders.

"Olaf. It's..." Violet says, relieved and ruined. She is so ashamed, she cannot bring herself to say her name. "Me."

"Violet Baudelaire," he slurs, deeply amused. "To what do I owe the _outrageous _pleasure? Calling to congratulate me?"

There's alcohol in his voice, so apparent she can almost smell it through the receiver. Violet imagines red wine on his lips, then celebratory champagne. She wonders what type of drunk he is most often. Around others. Alone. She wonders what he looks like at this very moment cradling the phone, sat crooked in the box office chair, a drink in his hand, eyes hazy and sparkling.

"Can you - " She starts, then loses her nerve against a wave of deep shame. Her lip wobbles traitorously. So exhausted she can hardly stand, she leans her forehead softly against the shattered wall of the telephone booth. The glass crackles and holds. Even before she speaks, she can feel that her voice will break and she hates herself for it. "Can you come get me?"

"Come get you," he repeats dully, in a voice that invites no argument or joke. There's a threat there, too. A promise of violence in response to wasted time.

"Yes." Although she had planned this conversation very meticulously during her hike down the mountains, her speech feels useless and flimsy and very far away. She does not know what else to say, or how to voice the aching defeat she feels, or the empty, weary surrender. "Klaus and Sunny are gone. And I've tried but I can't - can't survive here. In the Hinterlands."

"You're in the Hinterlands. And you want me to come and get you." He repeats carefully. The alcohol is gone from his voice and instead Olaf sounds clear and sober, and this is all the more terrifying.

"Yes. At the Last Chance." Violet mutters, soft. She glances to the store itself, all peeling paint and bleak, empty windows, as if Olaf might walk around the corner and open his arms to her. "Please. Please come get me."

"Why?" He sneers. "How do I know you're even worth the gas, Baudelaire?"

"Olaf," Violet begs, working so hard to keep from crying, her throat closes painfully, and her voice is high and pinched. Her hope is plummeting. "You know you've always… liked me. Preferred me. Wanted me."

It's humiliating to say aloud. To acknowledge a weakness neither of them had ever voiced. Even now, she feels the shadowy memory of his touch on her - fingernails catching up her spine in her wedding dress, blade pressed to her thigh beneath the table at Monty's, and his eyes always on her as if it was only a matter of time, a running of the clock, before she would become his.

"And? What of it?" Olaf demands, unimpressed. "It's going to take a lot more than that to have me at your beck and call."

"I'm all alone. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I -" she sucks in a breath, holds it until her chest stings. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

_Please show me mercy,_ she thinks, eyes screwed shut against budding tears. _Please do not hurt me. Please let me stay. _

Then, when he does not answer, "I need you."

There's a pause. She cannot even hear him breathing. In the background, there's a cheer, the clink of glass on glass, a riotous roar of laughter and shouting. Distantly, several voices toast, "_To Olaf!"_

"I'll be there soon." He decides with a growl. "Wait for me."

"I have been. I'll be here."

_Thank you,_ she thinks, and does not say it.

He hangs up first, and Violet is left shivering in the telephone booth. She sits on the floor amidst the trash, head tilted back to rest against the cold glass, and through her haze of tears, she stares at the empty dirt road and waits.


	2. Chapter 2

TWO

Night falls.

Violet watches the darkness come rolling down from the long scratch of mountains stacked crooked on the horizon, the sun sinking at her back. She fiddles half-heartedly with the garbage on the dirt floor of the telephone booth, hoping to find a dropped coin or two. Despite this distraction, she cannot keep herself from reflecting on her conversation with Olaf.

Her _bargain_, she thinks, bitterly ripping the _Daily Punctilio_ in two.

"_How do I know you're even worth the gas, Baudelaire?"_ The memory of his voice is enough to make her grimace, jaw clenched in fear and frustration. Mind spinning with anxiety, Violet wonders if he will even show. She can imagine that he might adore the inherent cruelty in this - might leave her waiting inside the Last Chance until the next day when he rolls up with a nasty hangover, still in his rumpled clothes from the night before. Or, she thinks, he might not even arrive at all. Might simply continue his life, wondering with amusement how long she will wait for him like an abandoned pet.

This fear is what pushes her into anger, makes her desperate for a plan despite her exhaustion. This, and the cold, finally drives her inside.

Still, the Last Chance is empty and silent and dark. Violet feels very small as she weaves between the aisles, blindly grabbing at supplies and backtracking to the front counter to examine each pick under the flickering brown light. Soon, she has a stockpile of goods which she packs very carefully into a hiking backpack.

In the face of Olaf's arrival, she feels no qualms in stealing from the seemingly-deserted general store. She feels only a desire to survive against his neglect in any way she can manage. Violet ponders this as she paces the aisles, making sure she has everything she might need. She returns to her backpack to find that the light through the windows has shifted, illuminating a cabinet beneath the front counter.

She kneels to examine it, squinting to peer inside. The glass parts with a squeak, and Violet reaches inside.

There are two knives that she takes. One is large and serrated, sheathed in a leather holster, which she shoves into her backpack without a second thought. The other is a slim, dark switchblade, the spring new and quick. She tucks this into her bra, grown roomy since her trek down from the mountains, and feels somewhat more prepared. The anxiety lessens. She scrambles atop the counter and unwraps a candy bar, nearly inhaling it. She has three bottles of water in her bag and one beside her, along with two bottles of root beer. She twists the cap off and lets it clatter to the floor, gulps the drink despite the fizz, and nearly empties it.

By the time Olaf arrives, she has eaten four candy bars and two cans of peaches. She has brushed her teeth, swishing her mouth with one of the water bottles, and spitting the suds into the grass outside. Her backpack is organized and well-stocked, and a warm sweater, luxuriously soft, has been slipped over her tattered dress, smelling like the spicy warmth of the general store itself. Violet has just finished reading her second magazine by the time she hears his tires displace the stones outside. Her breath stops in jagged apprehension. The switchblade stills against her ribs.

He parks crooked out front, gravel spraying. Every window is rolled down, and the scrappy car she had seen before has been replaced with one of the same style but sleek, quiet, and so black it bleeds into the night, edges hazy and undefined.

Olaf strides from the car and Violet ducks from the window above the register so he does not catch her eye. She had only managed a quick peek of him, silvery, dressed in a suit the color of smoke with swinging coattails.

He steps cautiously into the darkness of the shop, moonlight at his back. He turns to face her and that white light illuminates the side of his face, hollowing his cheekbones like a corpse. He grins when he spots her sitting hunched as a gargoyle atop the counter, glaring. At the floor, his eyes dart to the mess of wrappers and Violet braces herself for a cutting word, but he simply stalks towards her, swipes the remaining bottle of root beer, and says, "Let's go."

Violet is momentarily stunned. She had expected a speech - something grand, dramatic, taunting. She had expected that he might make her beg. Might want her on her knees, and even imagining this makes her bristle and sink with bitter humiliation, thick as bile on the back of her tongue. Yet it does not come.

He takes two steps away from her, the sound unexpectedly loud on the creaky floor of the empty shop, and lopes outside into the dark.

It throws Violet off, makes her question her knowledge of him and her confidence in his character. She might have preferred the begging, if only to be sure.

Behind him, the door closes with a clap. A piece of that bullet hole glass clatters to the floor. Violet takes a moment to recover from her shock before she lurches to her feet and hurries after him, backpack riding high between her shoulders.

The temperature has dropped significantly from when she was last outside, a cool wind blustering from the mountains. She crosses the sparse landscape and slides hesitantly into the passenger seat, placing her backpack between her feet. Olaf is reclining at the wheel, moonlight pooling into the wrinkles of his clothes. He watches her settle, face unreadable.

Violet examines him in return, not knowing what to say. In a different situation, with a different savior, she knows she would be nothing but grateful, brimming with humble thanks. But Olaf, sitting in repose beside her slurping his drink, deserves none of this, even if thanks had been just behind her teeth over the phone. His presence alone has soothed some of that sad desperation - and now all Violet is left with is bitter rage.

"You know, I don't usually drink root beer," Olaf says, tilting the bottle towards her, the neck tall like a pointed finger. "Brings back bad memories. But I don't think anything could spoil my mood tonight. Not even bad memories or this fizzy little drink. Cheers, Violet."

He lifts the bottle, drains the rest, and tosses it out his open window. It hits the ground before the Last Chance's front steps, cracks in two. In the moonlight, the glass glitters as if underwater.

Violet scowls at him. "Cheers to what?"

"Oh, to you, of course!" He crows, raising an empty hand. "To Violet Baudelaire! Loser, loser loser!" He cackles wildly, the laughter of someone truly entertained.

Violet looks away, disturbed and ashamed. The shame, at least, is familiar and ragged as her dress, worn with use. She does not know what to say. Olaf convulses with laughter until he stops as abruptly as he started, his eyes hot and piercing on her.

"You've lost your heart, haven't you?"

She is surprised by this observation, cut by it, as if the switchblade at her chest had sprung free and gored her straight through. She isn't quite sure what he means, though she knows it to be true without question. No responses or arguments come to mind. Violet stares to the mountains as he continues to giggle, feeling wretchedly, terribly seen.

"Oh! And cheers to me. Always cheers to me."

To her surprise, he still doesn't start the car. The mountains tower in the distance, snowy caps slightly visible in the gloom. The moon glows behind thin, gauzy clouds. It reminds Violet of the way her last coin had looked in her palm before she had called Olaf - spit-shined, gleaming, so scratched from her teeth it was hardly recognizable.

"Don't you want to get back to your party? I heard them on the phone. They'll toast to you all you like."

Olaf hums at that, a pleased smirk on his face. "They will. We're having parties all year, with each premiere. There will be plenty of time to celebrate."

Violet frowns, wondering what she is missing. "You aren't usually a patient man."

He laughs, stark, startled. Not as cruel as before.

"No," he agrees. "Never. But, you see, Violet - " He says her name like a gift, like a password. "You're wrong. This is not patience. This is revelling. This is a victory all its own and I intend to bask in it however long I please."

Olaf smiles, reaches out to touch her, running a hand over the greasy crown of her head. She sits frozen, endures, though her body relaxes at the gentle touch despite her best efforts. "You need a bath. You're disgusting."

"Just your type then," Violet spits, face glowing hot with embarrassment. There is a snarl of hair at the nape of her neck, too thick to comb out. Her dress is stiff with mud and breezy with holes. Black grime clots beneath her fingernails. She is a picture of dereliction and disastrous hygiene, and the fact that she cannot argue, cannot defend herself, is what makes her bite her tongue against further argument.

"Ah," he growls, hand gliding down to pinch her cheek harshly. His fingers are warm against her cheek. Goosebumps prickle her body, lingering in her joints, her soft spots. "Clever. Somehow I'd forgotten about that wicked little tongue of yours."

Violet smacks his hand away with a fierce glare and rubs her cheek, feeling a welt starting to rise. She crosses her arms, pretending to pout, and slips the switchblade from her clothes. It's easy to do in the dark, easy to palm and hold. Even having it in her hand, hot from her skin, is enough to make her breathe easier.

Olaf scoffs, a fresh thought in his voice."Though, that's no surprise. Reminds me of what you said during our chat earlier, when you were begging me to come save you. _You know you've always wanted me._ Let me assure you, Violet, that even bruised, broken, snarling, lifeless, _dead _\- I will want you. You, and that nasty mouth of yours. Even reeking and half-starved and full of so much _sweet _hatred. You are _always _\- what was it? - my _type_."

Violet winces, disgusted, terrified. Her heart slams against her ribs, worse than if he had threatened her outright. She knows that actors must be good liars. She also knows that, when it comes to his twisted, filthy affection for her, he is saintly in his honesty.

Olaf starts the car, which comes to life silently, headlights bright on the dirt road. The radio bursts with crooning noise, old love songs that feel slow and mocking.

"Don't try to touch me again," Violet tells him, though over the music and the wind rushing like water through the open windows, she is not sure if he hears her.

She does not speak up. Does not try again. There's a girlish flicker in her chest, thrilled, impressed, and revulsed by his vicious possession of her.

_Please do not hurt me,_ she remembers thinking. _Please let me stay._

"Why was a theatre named after you?" She bites out eventually, over the wind and the noise. Olaf allows the distraction. He twists a dial on the dash, and the voice on the radio cuts to silence.

"Are you saying you don't believe it was awarded to me based on talent alone?" He snorts. "I deserve it. But you can get anything you want if you threaten the right people. The fans, though - the party, the crowd, the audience. That's real. That's genuine. They're mine. Just like you."

She doesn't like that answer. It feels too direct, too straightforward. An easy trap to fall into, to let him talk about himself for as long as he can. Violet gathers her thoughts as the car gathers speed. Tries again as they rattle over the bumpy road.

"Don't you want to know what happened to my siblings?"

Olaf shrugs. "I don't care. Go ahead and tell me then, since you're obviously itching for it."

Earlier, when she had contemplated getting this far, Violet had planned to lie. To create an excuse or two on the spot. Yet Olaf sits preening with victory, picking his teeth with his pinkie nail and watching her calmly out of the corner of his eye, and she realizes with sick defeat that she does not feel the need. There is no trick to her abduction, no scheme. Olaf gets what he always wanted, and there is no need to lie, no need to stay one step ahead.

Beneath her failing anger, she is too exhausted, too defeated to lie.

"We were in the Mortmain Mountains," she begins, expecting to be interrupted with questions that do not come. "Snow gnats forced us into a cave for the night. We made a fire and fell asleep. When I woke up, they were both gone. I've been wandering around the mountains for weeks, I think, looking for them. I ran out of food and ruined my coat and - and - never found them. They're gone."

"Poor orphan," Olaf coos mockingly. "You've been abandoned yet again. You were all alone. But not anymore. You've put yourself in my hands, Violet, and I can assure you - " He reaches out slowly, and Violet braces herself, thumb on the trigger of her weapon. He brushes a reverent finger over the pursed line of her mouth. "That I will never let you go."

With a splintering glimmer of moonlight on metal, she flips the switchblade into action. Quick and firm, she presses it against the tender pulsepoint inside his wrist. It is a threat, a warning, a challenge she does not need to speak.

Olaf gasps in delight, a wicked, happy smile splitting his face like a gash, and then that nasty laughter returns. Despite the blade pressed to his wrist, he keeps moving. He dips his thumb into the damp pit of her mouth, hot as an open wound, dragging her cheek up into a painful grimace, a parody of a smile, a fish on a hook.

"Say it," he demands, flint in his voice through the amusement.

She does not have to ask to know what he means.

"I need you," Violet reminds him carefully, quietly. Gentle press of tongue and teeth against his skin.

"Oh, Violet," Olaf breathes, grinning with unbridled joy. Their eyes meet in the darkness, holding. His grip on the wheel is unwavering as the engine purrs, races. They're speeding away from the mountains, dust flying, neither looking at the road, and Violet realizes, beneath the violent wave of anger, that her fear has finally, blissfully vanished. "We are going to have _so much_ fun together."


End file.
